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If you have followed my blogs about Pentaho, you can easily detect that our momentum is full-speed-ahead. Another notch to add to our success is adding Doug Johnson to the Pentaho management roster as our CFO. Doug has a unique background that combines a passion for business intelligence, experience, bringing three companies through IPO, and extensive experience in open source and subscription-based services. I asked Doug to share with you, “What brought you to Pentaho?” Welcome on board Doug. Guest Blogger Doug Johnson There are a number of things about Pentaho that interested me when I began to talk to Richard about joining the company. The product area - business intelligence, the development approach - open source, the stage of the company – going through rapid growth and market dominance, and the people all struck a chord and raised my level of interest. As I got to know the management team and the board of directors during the evaluation stage, my interest continued to grow. As a CFO, business intelligence has always been a passion for me. The role of CFO requires a deep understanding of the data in the...

I often joke with my colleagues that Pentaho is the world’s largest “BI Operating System.” When you think about the number of core services that are required for any application platform – from authentication/authorization to content persistence to presentation across multiple user interfaces – it’s easy to see how architecture can become an obsession. I’ve always felt that Pentaho has the best architectural implementation of any BI suite on the market and that the decisions and investments we made in the early years (ca. 2005-2007) would serve our customers and the community well. This has clearly been the case, and the proof is in the velocity and number of enhancements that have been delivered in the last 12 months. In particular the tremendous improvements in reporting and analysis have provided tangible benefits and made us much more competitive vis-à-vis proprietary BI products. The platform team is now hard at work adding Java Content Repository (JCR) support (just as they did with PDI 4.0) and this will pay huge dividends in 2011 and beyond. There’s a quiet – you might even say invisible – side to Pentaho’s business which has emerged...

Summer is usually a quiet period in Europe - but not at Pentaho. The EMEA sales and marketing team got together for a couple of days in San Francisco for a sales bootcamp, which combined hard work with a celebration of another record sales quarter in Q2. It was great to meet everybody, as we are distributed across 7 countries and typically ‘meet’ via Skype. The organisation has been executing at an incredible pace. In fact, we achieved some significant milestones in the quarter: We announced great customers such as TV2 and Aspiro , both potential global leaders in the world of online entertainment. We announced a win over Business Objects at one of Europe’s top cancer treatment facilities, the London Oncology Clinic . We lured our new EMEA Marketing Director, Jean-Jérôme Schmidt, from MySQL via Sage Technologies to Pentaho. With Jean-Jérôme's sales background and organisational expertise, we will be talking to and announcing more outstanding BI customers soon. As part of our commitment to the EMEA region, we launched a new website for the German speaking market, where some of our largest European customers are, in recognition of its...

Can you...? How does...? Where do...? What is...? Sound familiar? Pre-Sales Engineers are the stage performers of the IT world; immensely capable, adaptable, confident, excellent communicators who are equally cool in front of large crowds and intimate groups. If you are in a Pre-Sales role, you have the absolute pleasure of showcasing what your product / service / solution can offer to help prospects make an informed decision. Pentaho Pre-Sales Engineers, have numerous discussions everyday with qualified prospects that want to evaluate Pentaho and prove that the software can satisfy their goals. Most prospects are looking for a solution that will help them reduce costs, increase profits and make their businesses function efficiently. Part of my job is to identify a "fit" for these objectives and recommend an approach to take when evaluating. During these discussions I am asked many questions that have definitive answers and some questions that have more than one answer. I thought it would be helpful to share the 3 most common questions asked to my team and I and our responses. Question 1: What is the most common reason an evaluation or implementation will not...

Looking around the room at our annual Pentaho Sales Bootcamp last week, it was impressive to see the number of new faces that have joined the team since last year’s event. We must be doing something right , as over the past few months, Pentaho has been a magnet for top players from all corners of the BI space. Last week was an excellent opportunity for our international Sales, Marketing, and Product teams to collaborate and work together to understand our customers’ current needs, how Pentaho’s solution can address them, and have a great time. This year’s Bootcamp consisted of three packed days of case studies, interactive discussions, presentations, happy hours, and even a boat ride around the beautiful (albeit windy) San Francisco Bay. Click here for an inside look at the Pentaho Sales Boot Camp. Bootcamp may be over, but our team is not done growing yet! After officially outgrowing our current space, Pentaho San Francisco will be expanding into a brand new office this week, and we are actively hiring top-notch talent to join our Sales and Marketing teams in the Bay Area. Aside from that, I am...

Pentaho is hitting the road this month to show you the world’s first BI integration for Hadoop with our three-city roadshow, ‘ Harnessing Hadoop for Big Data ’. Next, prepare to see blazing fast business intelligence when we pair Ingres Vectorwise with Pentaho’s Agile BI initative. BIG – We’re rolling into town to show you how Pentaho, as the face of Hadoop, can leverage the power of business intelligence and data integration for your Big Data analysis needs. These live seminars are free but space is limited, so be sure to register now. Harnessing Hadoop for Big Data – Live Seminar Series New York, NY : Tuesday, August 10th 2010 DC Area : Wednesday, August 11th 2010 San Mateo, CA : Thursday, August 12th 2010 FAST & AGILE – See what is possible when you combine the power of Agile BI with Ingres Vectorwise, the next generation of analytic database technology during this live webcast. Blazing Fast, Agile BI with Ingres VectorWise and Pentaho Webcast : Thursday, August 12th 2010 Want to learn more about Pentaho and meet the team? This month we will be holding Classroom Training classes in...